No One Talked

(I sent this email to my therapist about last night. Last night being the reason I cried all the way home on the uptown 3.)

Hi H,

I had a bit of a hard night last night, and I feel a bit like I’m wallowing today, so I just wanted to reach out. This is REALLY long. I’m sorry. I just kind of wrote… and I think I needed to.

Last week, after our meeting, I was feeling kind of lonely and decided to do something about it, so I emailed my friends (R, JP, P, G– the whole crew from the company) and said I wanted to have a farewell dinner party. Only R and P responded, but I made an executive decision and set a date and time and planned what I would make and everything. I never really do this– it scares me.

So last night was the night, and I did a whole grocery shop and asked G to make salad and P to do drinks… and I was excited. But when I got to their apartment, no one else seemed excited. I immediately started cooking– a whole complicated southern savory pie with a homemade crust and everything, a crowd-pleaser, I thought. And I tried to talk to them, tried to feel like I wasn’t a literal slave in the kitchen, kneading and slicing and layering and shredding… no one offered to help, which is fine, but no one talked to me either. No one asked me about how I felt about leaving (to which I would answer, honestly, I’m really scared), no one answered anything I said with more than a few syllables. I don’t think JP spoke to me at all. They seemed to talk AROUND me, not to me, and discussed all sorts of company things (JP and G are going to Yale to audition people today) and no one even offered to play me the songs from the show. I’m not really exaggerating when I say that no one talked to me during the hour I spent in the kitchen.

No one came to the table and said, “wow, that’s a real pie! Thanks!” No one told me it was delicious. No one invited me into the conversation at all. This very real effort I made to “expand,” like we have talked about, to feel worthy of love and friendship, was failing and very quickly, I was shrinking into myself.

After dinner, which lasted like, 15 minutes, I went to the bathroom and texted L, who’s in Connecticut. I told her that I was feeling sad and that I missed her. I told her she didn’t have to reply, but within ten minutes she called me. When I picked up and walked into the other room, no one asked who it was. We talked for about ten minutes about how hard this time of year is… it’s transitional and scary. She made me feel better, at least for the moment.

When I came back, they started Mad Men. Fine with me, except that at this point I just wanted to go home. I suffered through it, sitting off to the side because the couch was full, mostly just moping. I felt bad. I wanted to go home. Pretty much the second the episode ended, I gathered my things and told them I was going home. I walked out pretty much immediately and wrote in my journal all the way home. I still felt pretty awful last night, and still pretty awful today.

I don’t want to sound selfish, like I expected yesterday evening to be the official “me” party and for everyone to fawn over me. I guess I just hoped that by organizing an opportunity for friendship, by giving them the gift of a home-cooked dinner, by being present in their lives I would remember that “oh, yeah, I was being stupid, they really are my friends and do care about me.” What I felt, though, was the opposite of that. It felt like a goodbye… like when you go on a date with someone and you can feel that disconnection the whole time and you just KNOW they won’t call you again. I’m sure I overblew it in my head (the fact that I’m still moping about perceived slights is proof of this), but it felt really, really bad, and instead of a celebration of friendship, when I walked out I had the distinct feeling I wouldn’t walk in again. And I had the distinct feeling that I was completely unnecessary.

It hurts especially because in the last two years this group of people has given me enormous comfort, and made me feel special in all my flaws and struggles. I felt like a part of something. And with the loss of the closeness of friendship, I’m also losing the company, and I’m losing that distinct feeling of belonging. I feel like I’m suffering a real loss.

And the whole point of the party was because I’m really, really scared about what the next few months will be. I am scared of being thrown into this alone. I know I’ll be fine, but I’m scared.

What I really wanted was for someone to say, “I’m here for you. Give me a call anytime.”

But instead I walked out the door at 9:30pm feeling even more alone and scared than I did when I walked in.

I’m SO SORRY this was so rambly, but I didn’t know who else to tell, and I didn’t really want to wait until Thursday. No need to respond… I’m just feeling a lot of feelings and I guess if I couldn’t get the “I’m here for you” from a friend, I might get it from you.

Hope you’re well. Thanks for everything.
B.